FOOTLIGHTS

By ROBERTA HERSHENSON

Published: November 28, 2004

Jean Valentine, whose book ''Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems'' won the National Book Award for poetry on Nov. 17, taught at Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers for nearly 30 years.

''Most of us poets in the United States do teach,'' she said, interviewed by telephone from Berkeley, Calif., where she was scheduled to do a reading in a bookstore. ''It's one livelihood that's open to us.''

Ms. Valentine, 70, right, left Sarah Lawrence two years ago and has been teaching at various institutions around the country since then. When she was at the college, she led writing workshops for undergraduate and graduate students. She will return this spring as a poet-in-residence.

She said the increase in Master of Fine Arts programs has been a boon for poets and other writers, providing jobs that leave time to write during summers and holidays. She added that teaching gives balance to a poet's life.

''It is a wonderful way to be with people, both colleagues and students,'' she said. ''The students are colleagues, too.''

She said she tried to establish ''an open and friendly atmosphere'' in her writing workshops, because ''it's pretty tender to bring your work to 15 strangers.'' She offered another guideline for teaching: ''It's important to try hard not to encourage people to write the way you write.''

Ms. Valentine took writing classes at Radcliffe, where she attended college, and sat in on one of Robert Lowell's workshops in the 1960's. Those were her only formal writing studies, she said.

She has written 10 books of poetry; the first, published in 1965, won her the Yale Younger Poets Prize. Other prizes followed, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Sara Teasdale Award.

When Ms. Valentine returns to Sarah Lawrence this spring, she will teach workshops and do a reading on April 6 at 6:30 p.m. That event, she said, will also be a public dialogue with Suzanne Gardiner, another poet on the faculty.

''She'll interview me, but I have a lot of questions to ask her, too,'' Ms. Valentine said. ''I hope it will be more of a conversation.''

The Eye of the Artist

''There Is No Eye,'' an exhibition of photographs by John Cohen at the Neuberger Museum of Art at Purchase College, reflects the life and work of an artist steeped in music and of a musician steeped in the arts.

Mr. Cohen, 72, is a musicologist, urban-folk singer, filmmaker and former photography professor at Purchase, where he taught from 1972 to 1996. In the 1950's he lived among the writers, artists and musicians of the Beat generation, photographing Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso in moody black and white.

He also photographed Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and the young Bob Dylan.

The show, which runs through Jan. 2, also features Mr. Cohen's black-and-white photographs of Peru and the American South. Information: (914)251-6100.

A New Season

The Little Theater at the County Center will begin its third season of concerts with a program featuring John Sebastian and the singer Kenn Morr next Saturday at 8 p.m. Elvis Presley's 70th Birthday Celebration, with Michael Vegas Productions, will follow on Jan. 8, and Shirley Alston Reeves, the original lead singer of the Shirelles, will appear on Feb. 5. Those events are also at 8.

The renovated 420-seat theater, with its Art Deco d?r, is part of the original 1929 building.

Information: (914)995-4050.

Changing Scenery

Children can get into the act when Be Mused Productions stages a free performance of '''Twas the Night Before Christmas'' on Dec. 11 at noon at the New Rochelle Public Library.

Characters emerge from eight-foot-tall pages as the storybook literally unfolds. Children from ages 1 to 11 will be invited on stage to push, pull and lift the movable parts of the storybook, as well as to sing along with the cast, said Kim Breden, director and founder of the group, based in Yonkers.

The production also has original songs and music by Ms. Breden. She said children in the audience will also be invited to decorate a Christmas tree. Information: (914)632-7878. ROBERTA HERSHENSON